The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

  They became quiet when a heavy tread ascended the stairs. Then came the burly form of Forster, who yelled after the departing auction men to remember the value of what they had in their unworthy hands.

  “Superfluous creatures,” Forster concluded, turning to the desk, where his eyes landed on the stack of blue sheets. He rubbed his hands together. “Ah, there it is! All of the manuscripts of Mr. Dickens's books, you see, Mr. Osgood, were left by order of his will to be given into my care.”

  Forster, with two careful, trembling hands, grasped both sides of the manuscript of Drood and picked it up. His reverence was touching, if excessive.

  “This is the last of them in the house, I think?” Forster asked Aunt Georgy.

  “It is the last of his manuscripts here,” Georgy said, sighing. “The last anywhere.”

  With the manuscript safely lodged in his case, Forster's eye now darted across the desk to a particular quill pen. It was a long goose's feather, white and wavy, the nib stained in dried blue ink.

  “That's it, isn't it?” he asked.

  Georgy nodded.

  Rebecca asked what it was.

  “That is the pen with which he wrote The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Miss Sand,” answered Georgy. “Charles liked to use a single pen for a single book-there was a purity about it that way. He did not want the pen's spirit mixed up in trifling bills and sundry checks. With this, he finished the novel's sixth installment, just before coming into the house.”

  Osgood asked if he could see the pen. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, then gripped it as if on its own it might finish the final six parts of Drood.

  “Shall I,” Forster began, licking his plump cracked lips, “keep it at my office?”

  Georgy cleared her throat pointedly.

  “Just for now,” Forster clarified, clearing his own throat as an answer to her gesture. “Until you decide what you shall do with it, Miss Hogarth. Then you may-well, you may throw the thing into the Thames if you wish!”

  “Keep it for now,” Georgy agreed, at which point Forster eagerly plucked the Drood pen from Osgood's hand, deposited it into his case, and fled down the stairs without bidding any farewells.

  Chapter 15

  IN THE MORNING, OSGOOD AND REBECCA HAD PLANNED TO SEP-arate, Osgood to try again at Chapman & Hall in London and Rebecca to continue the labors at Gadshill. At the last moment, Osgood called Rebecca back to the Falstaff's wagon. He looked at her with a curious air. “I think you ought to come to London with me this morning, Miss Sand. If Mr. Chapman does concede to see me, I should like you to take down notes.”

  Rebecca hesitated. “This shall be my first time in London!” she exclaimed, then held in her excitement with her typically neutral air. “I shall get my pencil case.”

  “Good thing,” Osgood said. “Your eyes could use a respite from reading over Mr. Dickens's papers, I'm certain.”

  After arriving at the Charing Cross station in the Strand, Osgood and Rebecca, in the shadows of theaters and shops, walked through the astounding number of street performers and merchant booths on every corner, which made Boston seem quiet by comparison. Rebecca's eyes danced at all the sights. The shouting peddlers held up repaired shoes, tools, fruit, puppies, birds-anything that could be offered for a few shillings. The variety of accents and dialects made every English peddler's vocal promotions seem yet another different language to the American ear.

  “Do you notice something strange about the peddlers?” Osgood asked Rebecca.

  “The sheer noise they create,” she replied. “It is quite an astonishing thing.”

  As they spoke, they passed a Punch and Judy show. The wooden marionettes pranced across the small stage, Judy hitting Punch over the head with a cudgel. “I'll pay yer for a throwin’ the child out the winder!” shouted puppet Judy at her puppet spouse.

  “Look again,” Osgood said. “There is something stranger than the noise, Miss Sand, and that is that London businessmen do not seem to notice the roar of the streets at all! To live in London, one must possess an iron concentration. That is how it remains the richest city in the world. Here we are,” Osgood said, pointing to a handsome brick building ahead displaying the CHAPMAN & HALL sign in the window.

  This time when Chapman marched through the anteroom, he paused and took a few small steps backward upon seeing the guests on the sofa. The ruddy-skinned English publisher, with his strapping deportment and sleek dark hair combed into a flashy split across his wide head, looked the part of a sportsman and man of leisure, far more than that of a bookman.

  “Say, visitors I see,” said Chapman, though his eyes were fixed not on both visitors, but on Rebecca's slender form. Finally, he resigned himself to also noticing the gentleman.

  “Frederic Chapman,” Chapman announced himself, extending a hand.

  “James Osgood. We met yesterday,” Osgood reminded him.

  Chapman squinted at the visitor. “I remember your face vividly. The American publisher. Now, this little woman is…”

  “My bookkeeper, Miss Sand,” Osgood presented her.

  He took her hand gingerly in his. “You are most welcome into our humble firm, my dear. Say, you will come in with us to my office for my interview with Mr. Osgood, won't you?”

  Osgood and Rebecca followed a clerk who followed Chapman in the procession into his private office. The room displayed some expensive books but a greater number of dead, stuffed animals: a rabbit, a fox, a deer. The frightful artifacts emitted a stale, bleak odor and each one seemed to stare in dumb loyalty only at Mr. Chapman wherever he moved. The office had a large bay window; however, instead of looking out onto London, it overlooked the offices and rooms of Chapman & Hall. Periodically, Chapman would turn his head to make sure his employees were hard at work. One of his harried clerks delivered a bottle of port to the meeting with a bow that was more like a spontaneous wobbling of the knees.

  “Ah, excellent. I presume you and Mr. Fields have a wine cellar back in Boston,” Chapman commented as two glasses were filled.

  “Subscription lists and packing supplies fill our cellar.”

  “We have an extensive one. A game larder, too. Thinking of adding a billiard room-next time we'll play It is always a pleasure to see a colleague from the other side of the water.”

  “Mr. Chapman, I suppose you have already thoroughly investigated what else might remain of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We would benefit greatly if you'd share whatever intelligence you have gained.”

  “Investigated? Why, Mr. Osgood, you speak like one of the detectives in all the new novels. You tickle my belly with your American notions.”

  “I don't mean to,” Osgood returned seriously.

  “No?” Chapman asked, disappointed. “But what would be investigated about it?”

  Osgood, flabbergasted, said, “Whether Mr. Dickens left any clues, any indications about where his story was to go.”

  Chapman interrupted with a satisfyingly hearty laugh, proving the alleged tickling. “See here, Osgood, old boy,” he said, “you are a laugh in the real American fashion, aren't you? Why, I'm perfectly content with what we have of Drood. Six excellent installments.”

  “They are superb, I agree. But if I understand correctly, you paid quite a sum for the book,” Osgood said incredulously.

  “Seventy-five hundred pounds! The highest sum ever paid to an author for a new book.” This he pointed out boastfully in Rebecca's direction.

  “I would think your firm would wish to do whatever were possible to protect your investment,” Osgood said.

  “I will tell you how I see it. Every reader who picks up the book, finding it unfinished, can spend their time guessing what the ending should be. And they'll tell their friends to buy a copy and do the same, so it can be argued.”

  “In America, its unfinished state will bait all the freebooters, as they are called,” Osgood said.

  “That scoundrel Major Harper and his ilk,” Chapman said, tipping his glass high and ingesting his
port with a predatory swiftness as he glanced up at the congregation of animal heads. His hunting eyes, always roving, paused back on Osgood. “That's the thing you're worried about, isn't it?” he finally added. He leaned in toward Rebecca-not exactly unfriendly to Osgood's predicament but entirely lacking in interest relative to the pretty bookkeeper sitting across. “Say, I suppose your employer fought bravely in your War of Rebellion, didn't be? Lucky. Why, here we haven't any wars to speak of lately-small ones, but nothing worth suiting up for. Nothing to show oneself to the world as a man or to impress the ladies.”

  “I see, Mr. Chapman,” Rebecca replied, refusing to shrink from the intensity of his attention.

  “Remind me which battles you fought in, then, old boy?” Chapman asked, turning to Osgood.

  “Actually,” Osgood said, “I had suffered the bad effects of rheumatism when I was younger, Mr. Chapman.”

  “Shame!”

  “I am all better now. However, it prevented any notion of being a soldier.”

  “Still, sir, Mr. Osgood helped publish those books and poems,” Rebecca interjected, “that contributed to the enthusiasm and commitment of the Union to persevere in the cause.”

  “What a pity not to have soldiered!” Chapman responded. “You have my sympathy, Osgood.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chapman. About Drood,” Osgood said pointedly, changing the path of his persuasion. “Think of the value of our being able to better understand Dickens's final work. For the sake of literature.”

  It seemed by the twinkle in his eye and the draw of his mouth that Chapman might start another laughing fit. Instead, his impressive frame bounded to his window and he put a fingertip against the glass. “Why, you sound like some of the young clerks out there. I can't tell them apart most of the time, they're rather indistinct, don't you think, Miss Sand?”

  “I suppose I do not know, Mr. Chapman,” Rebecca began. “They seem dedicated to their work.”

  “You!” Chapman's strong brow curled up on itself and he leaned out the door where some clerks were packing up a shipment of books into boxes.

  A clerk nervously stepped inside the office. The other clerks all stopped what they were doing and waited on their colleague's fate.

  “Say, clerk, can't you go more quickly than that packing the books?” Chapman demanded.

  “Sir,” answered the clerk, “quite sorry, it's the smell that slows us down.”

  “The smell!” Chapman repeated with an indignation suggesting he had been accused of personally originating the odor. He unleashed a series of furious expletives describing the clerk's incompetence. When the publisher finished, the clerk meekly explained that Chapman's latest addition to the larder room, a haunch of venison, had become too malodorous in the summer heat.

  Chapman, putting up his nose as a test, relented, nodding. “All right. Put the venison on a four-wheeler, and I'll take it home for dinner,” he ordered.

  Chapman had punctuated his insults by lighting a cigar, while the clerk was waiting for dismissal. When Chapman turned back to the young man again he looked on him as though he did not know where he had come from.

  “You don't look very well!” Chapman remarked to the young man.

  “Sir?”

  “Not at all well. Pale, even. Say, can you drink a glass of port?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Tell them to send you up a couple of bottles from the basement.” The clerk fled.

  “This office runs like a clock,” Chapman said with impatient sarcasm to his visitors. “Now, you were-you were commenting about literature.” He picked up a bundle of papers. “You see this poetry book? Quite lovely. What they call literature. This, I will save in the closet to burn in my hearth in the winter. Why? Because poetry doesn't pay. Never has paid, never will. No use for it, you see, Miss Sand.”

  “Why, Mr. Chapman, I quite adore novels,” Rebecca said, sitting more erect and looking right at their host. “But in our saddest or happiest time, when we are all alone, what would we do without poetry to speak to us?”

  Chapman poured another glass of port for himself. “A fiver is plenty to give for any poem, especially as all poets are hard up. Five pounds would buy the best any of them could do. No, no, it's adventure, out-of-air expeditions, that people want to read these days, with the wretched state of the trade. Ouida, Edmund Yates, Hawley Smart, your American rye-and-Indian novels, that's the new literature that people will remember-God bless Dickens, with all his social causes and sympathies, but we must forget the past and move forward. Yes, we must not look back.”

  OUTSIDE THE OFFICE, in the deep shadows of the back alley, the slight clerk who had been reprimanded by Chapman, his head buzzing with port, climbed onto the back of a wagon. He tried to drag the massive, smelly venison haunch up by a rope. He struggled and puffed until a stronger hand easily slid it up from the ground.

  “Thanky, gov'n'r!” said the clerk. “Blast this venison. Blast venison, generally.”

  The man who had helped him was cloaked in the shadows. He now tossed a coin in the air, which the clerk clumsily caught to his chest with both hands.

  “Why, shouldn't I pay you, gov'n'r?”

  “You hear what your boss was saying to Mr. Osgood?” asked the stranger.

  “That American?” The clerk thought about it, then nodded.

  “Then there's more of this for you. Come.” He held out his hand to help the clerk step down from the wagon, though as it emerged from the shadow, it was clear that it was not a hand at all. It was a gold beasty head at the top of a walking stick. Its glittering black eyes shined out like holes bored through the shadows.

  “Come. It won't bite,” the dark stranger said.

  “Why'd you want to know about Mr. Osgood, anyway?” the clerk asked as he took hold of the cane and stepped down from the wagon.

  “Let's say I'm a-learning the book trade.”

  Chapter 16

  BACK AT THE DICKENS FAMILY HOME OF GADSHILL, OSGOOD and Rebecca had turned to the books and documents in the library. Osgood observed the library with a publisher's jealous interest in another man's books. There was a row of Wilkie Collins volumes and an English edition of Poe's poetry-as well as many editions from Fields, Osgood & Co.

  The walls between the shelves danced with famous illustrations by Cruikshank, “Phiz,” Fildes, and other artists who had decorated Dickens's novels. Oliver Twist staggers as a bullet lands in his arm from the smoking pistol of Giles from around the corner… From the same novel Bill Sikes prepares to murder poor Nancy… In a cavernous cell from A Tale of Two Cities in the Bastille, death and doom lingers… True-hearted Rosa confides at a quiet table to her upright guardian, Mr. Grewgious, that she suspects Edwin Drood's uncle, John Jasper, of grave mischief…

  Multiple books were found on the subject of mesmerism, and Rebecca noticed that Dickens had written notes in the margins of a few of them. One was titled, intriguingly, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World.

  “He read these books carefully,” said Rebecca, respecting the heavily used pages with a gentle touch.

  “What is it about?” Osgood asked as he was walking along the columns of books.

  “I am not certain,” Rebecca replied. “Inquiries into the supernatural.”

  She read a passage. The inquirer may grope and stumble, seeing but as through a glass darkly. Death, that has delivered so many millions from misery, will dispel his doubts and resolve his difficulties. Death, the unriddler, will draw aside the curtain and let in the explaining light. That which is feebly commenced in this phase of existence will be far better prosecuted in another.

  “That sounds like a humbug,” Osgood remarked. “Let us see what else he had.” At one of the other bookcases he tried to dislodge several books before realizing they were not actually books at all.

  “Mr. Dickens had these imitation book backs produced,” said a servant who had just entered the room, the same mustachioed man who had firmly ejected the intruder in the chalet. He put
a tray of cakes on the table with a bow, then went to Osgood's side. “This is a hidden door, you see, Mr. Osgood, so that Mr. Dickens could enter the library conveniently from the next room. As ingenious at home as in his writing!” The servant pushed the shelf lined with the false books out onto the billiards room, where games and cigars waited for Gadshill's male guests of years gone by.

  “Ingenious!” Osgood agreed, enchanted by the device. He read with a smile some of the false book titles Dickens had concocted. His favorites were A History of a Short Chancery Suit in twenty-one volumes; Five Minutes in China in three volumes; four volumes of The Gunpowder Magazine; and Cat's Lives, a nine-volume set, which made him think of lazy Mr. Puss curled into a cozy lump on a seat cushion in Boston.

  “I should like very much to publish some of these myself!” Osgood said.

  “Mr. Osgood! I should think you have quite enough to occupy yourself at 124 Tremont,” said the servant knowingly.

  “How did…” Osgood began to ask, at hearing the address of his firm back in Boston. He turned to look more carefully at the servant. “Why, is it you, dear Henry Scott? It is you, Scott!” He scrutinized the familiar face, so altered by the passage of two difficult years and the long, handlebar mustache carefully combed upward at either tip. A big difference in appearance was Gadshill livery, a loose-fitting white overall with cape and top boots.

  “Yes, Mr. Osgood,” he said. “Perhaps you recall, Miss Sand, that I accompanied Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby on their travels through America, as the Chief's personal dresser-and I daresay his most trusted man. You'll remember it was the time when all that had happened with Tom Branagan! Well, just before we were away on the tour, the Chief's top house man here at Gad's, his servant-or ‘domestic,’ as your American help prefer to be called-was found by Scotland Yard to have been stealing money from the cash box. A man who had worked for the Chief for twenty-five years and was paid generously for it! I am glad to say the Chief came to have enough regard to give me the station with a post for my wife, after we returned from America. Five years to the day.”